Camferfoge plain Cext* ESPRONCEDA EL ESTUDIANTE DE SALAMANCA
ESPRONCEDA EL ESTUDIANTE DE SALAMANCA C A M B R I D G E A T T H E U N I V E R S I T Y 1966 PRESS
cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 8ru, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York Information on this title: /9781107404021 Cambridge University Press 1922 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1922 Reprinted 1942, 1947, 1957, 1962, 1966 Re-issued 2011 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library isbn 978-0-521-04941-2 Hardback isbn 978-1-107-40402-1 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
NOTE THE short life of JOSE DE ESPRONCEDA (I 808-1842) is one of intense and hurrying activity. Even as a schoolboy (he was a pupil of Alberto Lista) he became involved in a political conspiracy; exiled at seventeen, he lived in Portugal, England and France, with that "Teresa" who inspired one of his finest outbursts of song. On the death of Fernando VII, in 1833, he returned to Spain, and spent nine feverish years as soldier, journalist, diplomat and politician in turn. He died, worn out by life, at thirty-three. Espronceda is a Romantic of the Romantics, strongly influenced by the prevailing desengano of the age, and in particular by that manifestation of it which we find in the works of Byron. He has left us poems of all kinds lyric, dramatic, reflective, picturesque, historical, philosophic, popular. El Diablo Mundo, the most notable and most substantial of his poetic works, sets forth with something approaching coherence his sombre and rebellious views upon life, on which the shorter poems throw many sidelights. El Estudiante de Salamanca has quite a different interest, as representing a type of work which the Spanish Romantics, headed by Rivas and Zorrilla, brought very near to perfection: the treatment in verse of a fantastic national legend. Espronceda puts into his highly modernised romance all his powers of fancy and imagination, together with his consummate artistic skill. And as a result the legend which he presents can hardly be surpassed as an example of Romantic poetry in Spain. May 1922 E. ALLISON PEERS.